Mars Bluff: Wikis

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Mars Bluff is a town outside Florence County in South Carolina, USA that bears the dubious distinction of having been inadvertently bombed with a nuclear weapon by the USAF.

On March 11, 1958 a U.S. Air Force B-47 Stratojet from the Hunter Air Force Base's 308th Bombardment Wing in Savannah, Georgia took off around 4:34 p.m. It was scheduled to fly to the United Kingdom for Operation Snow Flurry. The plane was required to carry nuclear weapons in the event of war breaking out with the Soviet Union. Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka was the navigator and was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the plane had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin for the transatlantic flight did not engage. As Kulka was reaching around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed hold of the emergency release pin. The Mk-6 dropped to the floor of the B-47 and the weight forced the bomb bay doors open sending the bomb 15,000 feet (4,572 m). down to the ground below.

Although the bomb did not contain the removable core of fissionable uranium and plutonium (the core was securely stored in a containment area onboard the plane), it did contain 7,600 pounds (3,447 kg) of conventional explosives. The resulting explosion created a mushroom cloud and crater estimated to be 75 feet (23 m) wide and 25–35 feet (7.6–10.7 m) deep. It destroyed a local home, the residence of Walter Gregg, and leveled nearby trees. Nobody was directly killed from the blast but several people in Gregg's family were injured from the explosion. Kulka was given the nickname "The Nuclear Nav" and he now lives in Thailand.

The crater is preserved and can still be seen today in Mars Bluff. (See the Coordinates at the top of the page for an overhead view of it.)